


Of Power Lines and City Streets

by enigma731



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3064079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint catches up to her in Atlanta, eight days after Anderson Cooper blows the lid off of everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Power Lines and City Streets

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a lot more meaningful if you’ve read Black Widow #13, although as always, I invite everyone to try the fic!
> 
> Thanks to [queenofthepuddingbrains](http://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthepuddingbrains/pseuds/queenofthepuddingbrains) and [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander) for cheerleading and beta!

_Oh, every silhouetted skyline_  
 _And constellations in these city lights,_  
 _They're passing in and out of my mind,_  
 _And I'm trying so hard not to fall._  
 _And it's the same old situation,_  
 _The same red blood is flowing through us all._  
([X](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/matthires/tangledweb.html))  
  


Clint catches up to her in Atlanta, eight days after Anderson Cooper blows the lid off of everything.

She’s staying at a hotel in the heart of downtown, under the guise of attending a football game. Her room is on the 42nd floor, and Clint finds himself silently cursing that detail for the entirety of the ride up in the dizzying glass-paned elevator. He can’t help thinking how he’d be an easy target in here, could be trapped or killed by a simple controls sabotage. He plays it casual, though, leaning back against the handrail and swallowing down the sense of vertigo he still hasn’t accepted as a permanent fixture in his life, an unfortunate companion to his hearing aids. By the time he steps off on her floor, it feels as though the ground is moving a little of its own volition.

Clint knocks on the door without hesitation, though his heart is beating a bit faster, dreading what he might find.

It takes Natasha a moment to answer, and when she does she’s looking disinterestedly at him through the crack of the door. The security chain is still in place, though he’s certain she’s already checked the peephole.

“Your pizza, Ms. Rollins,” says Clint, before she’s had a chance to speak at all. He brandishes the box he’s carrying and tips the hat he stole from a careless Dominos employee's unguarded car.

Natasha doesn’t miss a beat, pulling aside the chain and beckoning him inside though he’s pretty sure he can detect indignation in the depths of her eyes. He’s never been able to figure out whether he’s particularly good at seeing through her facades, or if she offers him just a little more than she does the rest of the world.

“Bring it on in here,” she says warmly, the barest hint of a Southern twang softening the edges of her words. “I could swear, I just had a pen right here in my hand!”

Clint does as he’s told, moving to set the box down on the nightstand as Natasha closes and locks the door again. By the time he turns back to face her, she’s standing scarcely an arm’s length away from him. He manages to resist the urge to jump.

“You can’t be here,” she hisses, though he notes that she hasn’t simply chosen to slam the door in his face.

Clint shrugs, aiming for casual. “Seems like I am, though.”

He takes a moment to glance around the room. It’s more or less standard hotel fare: one bed done up in white linens, nondistinct watercolor hanging on the wall. There’s a long blonde wig lying on the dresser, though, and knowing Natasha, she’ll have weapons stashed all over the place. The thing that strikes him the most is the window that takes up one entire wall. It shows the city below in a sea of lights, small enough from this height that is looks almost as though some of the stars have fallen and gotten caught on the roofs of buildings. That window is a huge risk, thinks Clint, yet he feels drawn to it all the same.

“Go,” she insists. “Keep the hat on. Leave the box here. Start walking and don’t stop until you’re sure no one’s watching.”

“Yes,” Clint says calmly. “I took Espionage 101 too.” The situation can’t be too dire, he thinks, if she’s giving him such direct instructions. So the room isn’t compromised--at least not yet--and he has it on good authority that her next target won't be in the state until tomorrow morning.

“ _Do_ it,” says Natasha, the pitch of her voice creeping upward. This is more than just irritation; this is verging on desperate, though that’s about what he’s expected to find.

“Not until you give me a good reason,” says Clint, crossing his arms stubbornly over his chest. Natasha ought to know by now that she isn’t getting off so easily, especially if she’s talked to Isaiah at any point since his own hospital visit.

“Maybe you missed the memo,” she snaps, though her volume is still restrained, clearly mindful of the thin hotel walls that surround them. He’s losing some of the words, but at least he’s plenty accustomed to reading her lips from their days in the field together. “I’m pretty much Public Enemy Number One at this point, and that’s not even my biggest concern. The people around me are in danger. The people around me are _dying_.”

Clint shrugs, keeping his expression neutral, relaxed, though he has to admit it’s difficult to see Natasha this unhinged, this _resigned_. “So what you’re saying is someone might try to kill me tonight? Sounds like a regular Thursday to me.”

“Clint,” she bites out, taking a step toward him that he thinks would probably intimidate just about anybody else. “S.H.I.E.L.D. might as well have disavowed me. Same with the Avengers. Go back to your job. Go back to your team, while you still can.”

“I’m not here as an Avenger,” he says firmly. “I’m not here as S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Natasha falters at that, just the barest shift in the muscles of her jaw. She crosses her arms, mirroring his stance as she tips her chin defiantly upward. They still aren’t quite on eye-level, but she does a damn good job of making Clint feel three feet tall. “Then _what is this about_?”

Clint sighs, trying to find the words. It’s about Kate, he thinks, and Barney, and maybe Jessica and Bobbi, too. It’s about all the doors he’s watched slammed in his face this year, all the things he hasn’t had the courage to say. It’s about running away, trying to go it alone, and the way she’s always managed to be there, despite everything, saving his unwilling ass. Natasha isn’t ready to hear any of that, though, has always danced away from that sort of confession.

“Well,” he says finally. “Pretty sure I can’t eat an entire pizza by myself.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, but Clint sees her surrender in that moment, the mix of anger and fear breaking into familiar exasperation. She drops one hand to her hip. “Fine. Far be it from me to interfere in your terrible decisions.”

Clint grins and flops down on the edge of the bed. “How generous of you.”

* * *

The pizza turns out to be unsurprisingly terrible. It’s started to go soggy, the cheese and sauce a tepid mass that requires an effort to chew. Still, they eat it in silence for a few minutes that feel much longer. Clint watches Natasha in his peripheral vision. She’s dressed in jeans and a grey t-shirt, the sort of outfit that would be unremarkable anywhere, her hair still pulled back into a bun he thinks must have been hidden beneath the wig. She looks tired in a way he’s seldom seen but often felt, the determination he’s always known in her beginning to crack.

“This pizza sucks,” he says finally, when he doesn’t think he can stand the silence going on any longer. He finds himself unsettled by the quiet these days, wondering what he might be missing. Now he thinks Natasha ought to be doing this complaining for herself, ought to have the energy for at least a snide remark.

She just shrugs. “Calories are calories.”

“Okay,” says Clint, beginning to feel a little desperate for some sign-- _any_ sign--that she’s doing more than going through the motions of her life outside the mission. “Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s really you. Should I have asked you a secret question? What kind of underwear am I wearing?”

“You’re not,” says Natasha, her face still impassive. She swallows another bite of cheese, the muscles in her jaw tight. “Rashid’s dead.”

Clint freezes, not because the information is a surprise, but because he hasn’t expected her to bring it up so readily.

“You knew that,” she continues, before he has a chance to respond. She sets the remainder of her pizza slice back in the lid of the box and gets to her feet, moving to stand in front of the window. The gauzy curtains stir around her in the breeze from the air conditioner, making the lines of her body look deceptively fragile where they're silhouetted against the city skyline.

Death could come for her at any moment, thinks Clint, though he’s becoming more and more aware that this is their constant state of being.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, wiping the remainder of the grease onto his jeans and moving to stand behind her.

“You went to see Isaiah,” she says flatly, without turning around.

Clint has the fleeting, futile thought that if he concentrates hard enough, he might be able to read her lips reflected in the glass. He nods, knowing that she can see.

“Rashid should have died years ago.” She crosses her arms, shivering almost imperceptibly. “You were always right about that. If I hadn’t--If I’d let you do your job, it’s possible none of this would be happening now.”

“Well,” says Clint, aiming for levity, “I’m always right.” He huffs a laugh at how ridiculous that sounds. “Except, you know, when I’m not and you have to save my ass.”

“Did Maria send you to rein me in?” asks Natasha, turning abruptly to face him again, her back to the window like a dare to the world.

“No,” he says honestly, taking a step closer, though he’s under no delusions that his mere presence here will solve anything.

“Then _why_ did you come?” she insists, pinning him with her eyes.

Clint falters for half a breath, still trying to figure out how to put everything he feels for her into words. He isn’t here to rescue her, learned years ago that that isn’t his place.

“I came to remind you,” he says finally, reaching out to find her hand and tangling their fingers when she doesn’t resist. “S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, Anderson Cooper--Everyone wants to decide who you are right now. But it’s still _your_ choice, Natasha. No matter what the rest of the world thinks.”

He almost misses the tears in her eyes, save for the way the light from outside gets caught on them, shimmering suspended for a moment.

“And if I don’t know anymore?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.

He shakes his head. “I don’t believe that. You do know. You’re Natasha Romanoff. You hate watery tea, and you can kill a man with your thighs. You love when you get to wear really wicked high heels for a cover, and you love it even more when you’re with a guy who lets you keep them on in bed after the job’s done.” Clint pauses, smiling despite himself. “You bring dictators to their knees and stop to feed stray cats in the same day. You never stop until you’ve made good on your mistakes. Don’t let anyone take that away from you, Natasha. It’s too important.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, just pulls his hand to her lips and kisses the backs of his knuckles slowly, then looks up to meet his eye again, her expression clear and determined now. “I still have to stop them, you know.”

Clint is under no illusions about that part. “Yeah. But you don’t have to do it alone, you know? Not unless you want to.”

Natasha hesitates for a beat, then takes a breath. “Stay tonight?”

Clint nods, finally letting go of her hand. “You look like you could use some sleep. I’ll take the first watch?”

“Thanks,” she breathes, letting him feel the weight of the word. “But first get rid of that monstrosity in the pizza box.”

He laughs, moving to do her bidding.

Hours later, curled around Natasha’s sleeping form in bed, Clint watches tiny cars crawl by on the streets below and thinks that he doesn’t mind this particular silence.


End file.
